It was one of those rare times, a moment you did not expect and will never fail to appreciate.

It was only a dinner, this one with Kathy, the mother of one of two good friends of ours. She’s someone we know casually but like greatly.

We’re at the Italian Café in Falls Church, our very favorite restaurant, and we got here on two of our Vespas¹, Linda’s bright red 300cc 2020 GTS and Terror, the gray 2016 SuperSport I rode in two Scooter Cannonballs.

Kathy’s in town to house-sit while her daughter Sara and Larisa, Sara’s significant other, are traveling on vacation.

We’ve been meeting for dinner at the Italian Café for a few years now, Somehow² we started talking about me taking Kathy for a ride on a motorcycle, or on Terror or Erebus³, my other Vespa.

The stars never aligned for such a ride until Kathy’s house-sitting gig. I really wanted to make it work.

Kathy’s ridden as a motorcycle passenger in the past with an older brother so she sorta knew what to expect. I ended up offering Terror for the ride, figuring it would be easier for her to get on and off⁴. Besides, Kathy has never been on a Vespa.

Both Vespas had been serviced so I check the tires and the engine oil on both and wash each⁵. We bring a spare helmet and gloves for Kathy.

We pick her up and she gets settled in behind me and I have to confess I’m nervous for a while during the ride to the Café. Terror is a full-size 300cc Vespa but still smaller than a standard motorcycle and it takes me a while to get acclimated to carrying a passenger⁶, which I’ve never done on a Vespa.

But I’m extremely – I mean, really extremely – careful and we arrive safely and without incident. She’s a good passenger and never once grabs onto me in terror, though we were aboard Terror.

The weather is sunny and warm, and we take a table outside and the food is good⁷ and I relax and Younces Jarfarloo, the owner and one of the nicest guys I know, comes out to talk with us.

He remembers Kathy and we laugh about the Vespa ride and he talks about his own motorcycle riding experience (he used to ride a Kawasaki sportbike)⁸.

Then Dan Rollyson, another good friend of ours⁹, comes out of the Café – he’s picking up dinner – to say hello. We talk and laugh and ask about their two sweet collies and make plans for dinner in a couple of weeks.

A couple at another outside table asks if the Vespa belongs to us. (The helmets give us away.) “I saw the red one, it looks beautiful,” says the woman. Terror apparently blended into the pavement.

The sun begins to wane. We finish up and take Kathy home. The ride back is easier for me than the ride out; maybe I was better prepared, mentally. (She says the rides were good, except “I was a little concerned about falling back a few times,” she says¹⁰.)

We say good-bye with plans to meet again the next time she’s in town.

It was a really good time, but it wasn’t until later, when everything slowed down, did I start to comprehend how special it was.

It was like… it was like the dinner we had with Linda’s Uncle Kristi and Aunt Irene in New York City, way, way back in 1999. We’d flown out there to see the Ernest Shackleton exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History¹¹.

We met Kristi and Irene at a restaurant of their choice and spent a wonderful evening with them. Kristi was one of those people you meet and can’t forget – a wonderful sense of humor, fascinating personal history, interest in you as a person.

I’ve always fondly remembered that time with Kristi and Irene (it was only that one time, unfortunately¹²). It slowly dawned on me that the wonderful, easy time with Kathy mirrored that distant night in Manhattan. We’ve had great times with friends and relatives, of course, but those two nights are now inextricably linked in my mind.

“What a gift it is to be able to luxuriate in today,” says superb musician and writer Elle Cordova in her Thought experiment video. (It’s an inspired rumination on the swift passage of time and of ordinary days being special.)

You might consider those two dinners, so far apart, as ordinary. But to me, they will always be special.

***

1 – C’mon, you know this essay was going to involve Vespas or motorcycles sooner or later.

2 – I’m sure I’m the one who brought it up.

3 – The two ships from the 1839 James Clark Ross expedition to the Antarctic. You remember, right?

4 – I could have taken Terra Nova, my 2012 Yamaha Super Tenere, but that’s a tall bike that gives even me pause while mounting/dismounting.

5 – Wanted to make a good impression, y’ know.

6 – Carrying a passenger makes the bike handle differently; the extra weight means you have to be much more careful in accelerating and stopping and during turns.

7 – No wine for any of us, though. We never drink when we’re on the bikes.

8 – I’ve been trying to get him interested in Vespas, of course.

9 – He and Pearl, his wife, are great folks. We met Dan by happenstance at a local veterinarian’s office during a sad time and we bonded over dogs and trains and other things and we’ve stayed friends with him and Pearl.

10 – Terror doesn’t have a backrest or a top case on the back.

11 – Shackleton was the one who got me interested in Antarctic exploration.

12 – Kristi died in 2018; Irene died in 2003.